An Ode to Valentine's Day, Chaucer and Taking out the Trash

Feb 22, 2013

An Ode to Valentine's Day, Chaucer and Taking out the Trash

For Valentine’s Day, our resident poet, David J. Rothman, has written a poem that’s part commentary, part history lesson, part declaration of love. He calls it “Be My Valentine.” Rothman lives in Boulder. He teaches at Western State Colorado University, Lighthouse Writers Workshop of Denver, and CU Boulder. He speaks with host Ryan Warner about the history of the holiday and the research that goes into making poetry.

Be My Valentine

Those who think that poetry is dead,Who like to argue that all art has fledTo YouTube or the movies or dull prose,Will still go out and buy a red, red roseAnd scratch their prosy heads for words to sayThat might do more than prose on Valentine’s Day.

As well they should, considering that love –I mean the burning ice-cube kind, full ofEuphoric sorrow, tongue-tied talking, manicDepression, falling upward, happy panic –I mean love, the human Superglue –Knows more than prose, and that prose just won’t do.And after all, although the legends ofSt. Valentine are old, a day of loveNamed after him came from a poet’s brain,Not some chocolate marketing campaign –Yes, a poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who,To praise his king in 1382,Wrote “The Parlement of Foules,” whereThe goddess Nature doesn’t offer prayer,But tells the assembled birds to choose a mateEach year on this old martyred saint’s feast date.She says choose love, incited to your pleasureBy Nature’s laws, her statutes and her measure.

Love, Nature…statutes?! Oh, recipe for troubleThat can reduce the hottest love to rubble.And here in Colorado, as elsewhere,We’ve had our legislative goose-chase share.Who can love and who can marry who?How do we choose who gets to say they’re two?Where do our morals intersect with law?Who gets to say they’re happily bourgeois?Who can adopt? Visit the hospital?Inherit homes? Sign checks? Tough questions all.

On one side stand defenders of the faith,Who argue what the Bible saith it saith,Which is that since our time on earth beganA marriage is one woman and one man.They argue states should take their side to quarrelWith what they feel has always been immoral.Overturning thirty centuriesOf doctrine shouldn’t happen with decrees.Revolutions are all fine and good,But most don’t turn out as folks hoped they would.So one can understand why some go slow,And when some lovers say “I do,” say “No.”They feel God, law and nature won’t agreeTo sanction new forms of matrimony.

And yet it used to be “unnatural”For white and black to go to city hall,For Catholic to marry Protestant,Let alone that either one should wantTo marry someone Jewish. God forbid!No love between a Wasp and Mick, or Yid!Civilization would go down the sewerIf anyone could be a someone’s wooer!But we got over that. Are we so feebleThat we can’t deal with change that lets more peopleExpress their love by getting hitched? And the facts is –We might earn revenue from marriage taxes.

Remember Juliet and Romeo:Forbidden marriage brought Verona woe.We don’t want that. Don’t we want everyoneInstead to learn to fight over which oneWas due to take the garbage out last night?Neglected to turn off the car dome light?Who forgot to put away the food?Whose family’s more stupid or more rude?Who’s going to clean up puppy diarrhea?Or make the bed? You get the idea.

So on this feast day let’s all make a deal.Love is hard and so is change. So realThey sometimes hurt, both make us actAs if we’re blind to every simple fact.And fact is, change is coming, change is here.The British House of Commons made it clearWhen it approved gay marriage two to oneLast week, as now nine US states have done.And they’re all doing fine, life’s not in tatters.Perhaps it’s how you love, not who, that matters.

Still, maybe everyone should make haste slowly.The goal’s not worth it if it kills the goalie.Both sides want to build the institution,Not to make folks fear its diminution.And that means talk, more talk…let’s talk a bit…Perhaps over a glass of wine, some chocolate?O Colorado, I love you. You make me whole.